RSSNature and Grace RedivivusW.H. ChellisDr. R. Sc…
Nature and Grace Redivivus
W.H. Chellis
Dr. R. Scott Clark from the Heidelblog commented on re: Rehabilitating Theonomy:
This is an interesting and significant discussion for which we’re all grateful.
At the end of your post you say, however, that grace both restores and “perfects” nature.
Did you mean to say the latter?
Didn’t the Reformation reject that notion? Why does nature, per se, need perfecting? Do you mean to embrace all that phrase entails?
It seems to me that the Reformed confessions were at pains to deny that very notion. Adam was created in “righteousness and true holiness.” What’s to perfect?
He anticipated a consummation upon completion of the probation, but this was a change in status relative to God not a perfection of nature, was it not?
R. Scott Clark
http://www.oceansideurc.org/the-heidelblog
Thanks Scott. The short answer is that I agree with what you are saying. I use the language of Thomas but I equivicate on the meaning. I understand Thomas to be referring to being while I am suggesting eschatology status.
I do not think I am being inconsistant with the Reformed tradition in using the language this way. This question came up a couple of months ago when the inestimable DGH objected to the language. Click here for that discussion complete with references to Rutherford, Bavinck, and others.
R. Scott Clark
February 1st, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the reference to the earlier discussion. As much as it pains me to say it, I agree with Darryl (just kidding - we agree so often it’s a little disturbing. He keeps writing what I’m thinking).
I agree with most all the quotes you posted in the earlier discussion, except Rutherford (if I’m remembering the quotations correctly).
The rest of them that you quote seem to say the same thing I’m saying. Grace renews nature. Renewal is not the same thing as “perfecting.” As you suggest in your response, there is a neo-Platonic ontology embedded in it from the “get go.” I think it appears in the first couple of pages of the Roman Catechism. They have it that we, in redemption, participate in the divine being.
As I understand it, there are three basic views of nature and grace:
1. Rome/Medieval: grace perfects nature because nature is, by virtue of being finite, defective;
2. Anabaptist/Radical/Dualist: Grace destroys nature because the latter is inherently evil;
3. Protestant: Grace renews nature, because nature was created “good.”
Thus, it was a little surprising to see a Protestant theologian speaking of grace perfecting nature. One wonders if he meant by that what Rome does or whether he was using the traditional Roman/medieval language in a Protestant sense?
As Protestants who reject the “theologia gloriae,” we say, don’t we?, that nature is not in need of divinity but restoration, and renewal, and glorification, all of which comes by grace.
Nature and grace are not essentially contradictory, in themselves. The tension, to the degree it exists, begins in the fall.
That’s why it’s better to speak of renewal rather than perfection, since that scheme was embedded in the nature of things. So, it’s not as if there’s never *any* tension, but only that the fall introduces whatever tension exists.
Cheers,
rsc
Peter
February 1st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I agree with Scott that there is no imperfection in the original creation, but there is still a sense in which it’s true that nature is “perfected.”
If we take “perfect” in the sense that the letter to the Hebrews seems to use the term (eschatological glorification), then I do think that nature, created good, was also created to be “perfected.”
I agree with Richard Gaffin here, who argues that Paul’s teaching about “natural” and “spiritual” in 1 Corinthians 15 imply that Adam was destined to progress in God-likeness.
W.H. Chellis
February 1st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Sounds good. I am happy to affirm that nature restores grace. I suspect Rutherford meant to use the language with a Reformed meaning. I am attracted to this because it helps keep the Reformed position within the realist tradition. Again, I think grace restoring nature accomplishes this continuity.
My fear for theonomy is that it degenerates into a grace replaces nature scheme.
BC
R. Scott Clark
February 1st, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hi Peter,
I think we’re agreed, but I wouldn’t think that the writer to the Hebrews is working within a Platonic conceptual world! In such a case, “perfect” is, as you say, “eschatological,” not ontic and that’s my main concern, not to render the problem of the fall a matter of being.
Anonymous
February 1st, 2007 at 5:06 pm
How bout a little Hoeksema, gentlemen?
“For Christ is not an afterthought of God, so to speak, but in the counsel of God He is the Firstborn. Salvation is no repair work, but the realization of God’s eternal covenant, even through the deep way of sin and grace. Not the first world, but the new creation, of which the risen Lord is the Head, and in which the tabernacle of God shall be with men, is the goal, the purpose of God from eternity.”(The Covenant:God’s Tabernacle With Men)
Craig Phelps
Steven W
February 1st, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I think that moving from “a little bit lower than the angels” to a position that is able to judge angels qualifies as ontic.
The maturation paradigm, however, helps us here, as it is appropriate for a child to be a child (nothing inherently bad about being a child) but he still grows up into full manhood.
You can be perfect and still improve.
W.H. Chellis
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am
O.k. the question is not whether the language “grace perfects nature” is being used here the way Thomas used it. We all agree that God’s creation was perfect and did not need to be perfected in an ontological sense.
Still, it seems to me that our theologians have continued to make use of the traditional formula. For instance, this morning I was reading Bavinck on the covenant. In Vol. 3 of his Reformed Dogmatics he writes:
“The covenant of grace is not, as Cocceius taught, the successive abolition of the covenant of works but its fulfillment and restoration. ‘Grace restores and perfects nature.” (pg. 226).
Again, Bavinck does not mean exactly what Thomas meant but he continues to use the tradition language filling it with a biblical meaning.
This is the heart of the question. Are we allowed to do this?
The upside is that we affirm Reformed catholicity (i.e. we are the real catholics) by embracing but reforming the realist philosphical and natural law tradition. Second, the language includes something very important. The end of grace is not a restored Garden but a glorified one. It moves beyond creation, fall, redemption to creation, fall, redemption, consummation.
I suppose we could say that “grace restores and consummates nature” but it sounds funny.
The
Jared
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 am
Regarding the perfection of nature (and I think this is what Dr. Leithart was referring to) - my first thought was of Christ being perfected. The loveliness of a “more perfect” tent (Heb. 9:11) and all that jazz - is it appropriate to believe that grace is super-perfecting nature? That, without detracting from the perfection of the garde, to believe that this world’s future glory and goodness will superabound in that perfection.
W.H. Chellis
February 5th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Scott,
One more quote and also a thought.
“Witsius can even declare that the faint glimmerings of the natural light provided a ‘foundation’ on which the gospel can build: ‘for as grace supposes nature, which it perfects; so the truths revealed in the gospel, have for their foundation those made known by the light of nature.”
Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol One, pg. 301, citing Witsius Economy of the Covenants (III. v. 15.)
Here is the thought. Does the idea that grace perfects nature seem problematic because it suppose grace before the fall?